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Alt:ernative Chat’s 10 Years, 10 Questions

Alt:ernative chat is looking for World of Warcraft players to answer the same ten questions to compile into a podcast in honor of WoW’s 10th Anniversary. As you might have gathered from this post, I definitely play World of Warcraft, and thought it’d be fun to answer the questions. Check out my answers below, and if you’d like to submit your own, visit here to get a link to the questions or a form you can fill out if you’d rather not blog it. :)

1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?

It’s all my boyfriend’s fault. :P

It was my senior year in college, and we had just started dating pretty recently. He started me on playing League of Legends as a way for us to keep in touch over Thanksgiving break, and by Christmas he had convinced me to try WoW. The rest is kind of history from there. I still have not played any of the Warcraft RTS games, although considering how much of a lore nut I’ve become, it’s a wonder I haven’t yet.

2. What was the first ever character you rolled?

The first real character that I rolled on my own account was a worgen warlock named Buttercup, who was accompanied by my boyfriend’s worgen warrior, Westley. I didn’t know much about the game at the time, and mostly spent my time attempting to keep up, falling off cliffs, getting lost, getting new cloth gear that had armor on it, doing terrible DPS in dungeons, and later, riding everywhere on the rocket that came with Refer-A-Friend at the time. She is still sitting at level 67, where we stopped right before we were high enough to go to the magical land of Northrend (or that’s how it felt at the time) and went to play Horde on another server.
3. Which factors determined your faction choice in game?

My faction choice was more of an accident than anything else. My first characters were Alliance, and then my boyfriend and I played Horde for awhile because he had a guild of friends that did and it’s his favorite faction. After that guild fell apart, we rolled gnomes on Wyrmrest Accord on a whim, and ended up finding our current (amazing) guild, which has prompted us to stay Alliance. I have no problem with the Horde, and we have a sister guild on another server that I regularly feed my alt addiction with. :P It also doesn’t help that there are two races, one Horde and one Alliance, that I would have all my characters be if I had the opportunity. (Gnome and blood elf, if you were wondering.)
4. What has been your most memorable moment in Warcraft and why?

There have certainly been a few. One of my favorites to this day is zoning into one of the Auchindoun dungeons on my gnome priest, and promptly being hit by one of the mobs’ knockback abilities and being punted straight back out of the instance. That’s definitely one of the funniest ones, but the most memorable ones have been great times with my guild, whether playing hide and seek, having Hallow’s End parties in Gilneas, taking out Horde in front of Stormwind, eating shrink feasts during dungeon runs (or putting down hundreds of feasts), and downing difficult bosses that took us awhile to get there. Essentially, doing things with my guild is the best part, hands down.
5. What is your favourite aspect of the game and has this always been the case?

Group content is my favorite part of the game. I like running dungeons, scenarios and raids with my friends. I have so many screenshots from past raids and dungeons that make me laugh because of the camaraderie we all shared. I’d say this has generally been the case for the whole time I’ve played, as soon as I finally learned to do group content in a meaningful way, and raiding has really solidified it.

A close second is solo questing, since I am interested in lore, like to read quests, and in general tend to quest slower than a lot of people I play with.
6. Do you have an area in game that you always return to?

If I’m leveling Alliance, I almost always quest through Westfall once I hit level 9, no matter what race I play. On the Horde side, I always play through the undead quest line around level 10 on. On either faction, I play through Dragonblight in Northrend all the way through to the Wrathgate. It’s still one of the best cinematics I’ve seen in the game, and it nearly made me cry the first time.

7. How long have you /played and has that been continuous?

Here are the characters I’ve raided with, excepting Bhrea, who was my first 85 in Cataclysm and arguably my oldest character:

Minnieheals: 51 days, 17 hours

Bhrea: 12 days, 14 hours

Daisysmash: 8 days, 8 hours

Mystique: 12 days, 9 hours

Quirina: 13 days, 17 hours

My subscription hasn’t lapsed since I started playing at the end of 2010. I’ve had less time to play at times where I usually only logged on for raid or between expansions would stay logged off for longer periods of time, but I always had my sub so I could log on whenever I wanted.

When I actually look at the time /played, it doesn’t surprise me that Minnie is the highest, but I’m still surprised by how much higher it is. Shouldn’t be – she is my main and my guild namesake, so….
8. Admit it: do you read quest text or not?

I definitely read quest text if I’m interested in the zone and its storyline, but if I’ve done the storyline several times, or have gotten bored with it, I start to skip quest text. This rule doesn’t apply to the questlines I mentioned above – no matter how many times I’ve played through them, I still reread the quests. It’s like a favorite book.
9. Are there any regrets from your time in game?

Not any that I can recall. I was a little disappointed that I was unable to get one of the achievements for my main before patch 5.4 because it would no longer be available. Otherwise, I don’t get too bent out of shape about missing achievements or not being a total completionist. I think I might regret it if I don’t get my legendary cloak for my tank before 6.0, but not enough to seriously regret it.

10. What effect has Warcraft had on your life outside gaming?

It’s helped me make friends with a lot of people that I wouldn’t have without it, from people that are across the country to people that I knew in high school or college but didn’t become close to until after we started playing games together. It’s also supplemented my life in random ways, like giving me more reading material, more music to listen to, and oddly helping my sense of direction.

Do any of you have answers to these questions? Let me know in the comments!

Well…I wouldn’t say game nerd necessarily, but pretty close. :P It’s fairly recent too, since senior year in college. I only play a couple of games regularly and don’t really do console gaming. It’s like reading a book, but LIVING the book. And also hanging out with a gigantic group of friends. :)

about.me

I graduated from college bright-eyed and not knowing what to expect. After 5 months of unemployment and resume-launching, 7 months of retail, and 2 months of commuting 4 hours once a week, I'm working as an office/account manager at a high-end landscaping installation company after spending nearly a year working three jobs at once (including this one!).

When I'm not working, I blog, photograph things with vintage cameras (and sometimes of vintage things), write fiction, read from the never-ending stack of books on my nightstand, play video games (World of Warcraft, Diablo III, and League of Legends :D), spend time with the boyfriend, cook recipes from Pinterest and tweet.